I landed at
Durban, and was, of course, soon being interviewed by the Press.
Then, as now, the racial question was acute, and
the Unions were alarmed at the manner in which the coloured people
were supplanting them, even in the skilled trades. To meet this
competition, the Unions refused to admit the coloured races to
membership, which, of course, only aggravated the evil. My suggestion
was that the Unions should be thrown open to the coloured men,
and that, as they would then claim the same pay as the whites,
a thing they were anxious to do, their competition as cheap workers
would end. It will scarcely be credited by those not on the spot,
but this produced as much sensation as though I had proposed to
cut the throat of every white man in South Africa. The capitalist
Press simply howled with rage - there were, of course, exceptions
- and at Ladysmith a mob, led by a local lawyer, wrecked the windows
of the hotel in which I was staying.

This, however, was but the beginning. At every station at which
the train stopped on the way north to Johannesburg, there were
crowds of sightseers to hoot and jeer and threaten. Many of these
were Boer farmers, who had already forgotten the stand I had made
on their behalf at home, and for which, also, by the way, I had
been stoned and hunted through the streets of towns and cities
in both England and Scotland; but these, as a rule, stood looking
on and grinning. At one station where the train stopped 15 minutes,
and where the mob was specially menacing, I got on to the platform
and succeeded in addressing the people. I explained what I had
said, and then invited the working men present to say whether they
disagreed. For a time no one moved, until a sturdy young blacksmith
stepped forward and gripping my hand, said, "Here's one that's
going to stand by you; you have spoken the truth," whereat
quite a big cheer went up, and one fellow, a blackguard of a journalist
who had led the opposition, rushed at me with uplifted stick, but
was seized by some of those about him and rushed to the outskirts
of the crowd. Next morning the Johannesburg Press reported that
I had been stoned out of the station!

But it was at Johannesburg where the storm burst in all its fury.
Mr. Connolly, President of the Natal Railwaymen's Union, and a
member of the Legislative Chamber, had very courageously accompanied
me up from Ladysmilh.2 An Irishman with the heart of a lion, he
was in indifferent health, and for some years I have lost trace
of him. When we were entering the capital of the goldfields, he
was visibly alarmed. He had had some experience of Johannesburg,
and knew what its cosmopolitan crowd could: do. The station, the
approach leading thereto, and the bridge over the railway was one
black mass of seething, howling demons. As the train drew up, young
Crawford, one of the deported nine,3 saw me, and signalled to a
number of constables, who formed a cordon round the doorway, whilst
a number of them surrounded me and led me by a by-path up from
the station to where a cab was waiting. The crowd, which was waiting
for my exit by the main doorway, was for a minute or two outwitted,
but as the cab, guarded by the police, passed over the bridge,
someone awoke to what was taking place, and with a shout the mob
started in pursuit. Showers of stones smashed the windows, and
both the driver and the policeman came in for some nasty cuts.
But the horses were good, and we soon out-distanced the pursuers
and reached the hotel in safety, and there a cordon of police kept
the mischief-makers at bay.